shittons of bad mechanics

Changing Breeds Part III: A Little Less Perversion, A Little More Broken

First, I must share an image I didn't get to due to the way we ended last time.



Not only does the guy at the bottom look kinda like Samuel L Jackson having some sort of stroke, I like to think the lion guy tearing things up in the background is just an ordinary lion that happens to be a werebro. By the light of the full moon, it gets an insatiable thirst for Natty Light and spray tans.

Anyway, now we get to the real meat of the book, how it plays. It, as expected, plays pretty terribly. This is the point where the book goes from "Okay, so the intro is terrible, but maybe the mechanics will work with a new coat of paint!" to "I have no paint thinner and I must huff."

The character creation is like all the other supernatural types in nWoD: make a human character then apply the supernatural template on top. Compared to a lot of templates (looking at you, Promethean and Geist) it's actually pretty compact. This is because it is literally the Werewolf template with name changes and a few things switched around, right down to Renown (now Respect), universally regarded as a piece of shit mechanic that shouldn't exist.

One thing I will give the system is that it separates supernatural power into Favors and Aspects. Favors are alterations to the basic forms that define what your shapeshifting is like, and Aspects are the standard supernatural powers you've come to expect. However, the Aspects are retarded and poorly balanced, and Favors are even worse. What's really bad? The book acknowledges this.

quote:

Each breed has three Favors that "come with the territory" for such creatures. A few Favors resemble Merits in the World of Darkness Rulebook, and are described that way in game terms. No, these Favors aren’t always "balanced" in game terms, any more than a mouse and a lion are “balanced” in real life. Even so, the human element provides a certain balance among beasts; a shapechanging hare, for example, is far more clever and magical than a normal bunny.

When I read this paragraph, I wanted to find whoever was responsible for this condescendingly smug shit, drag them behind the shed, and shoot them for their own good.

Anyway, we get the full writeups of all the Accords now, which are long and tedious and I won't bother you with a breakdown of each. Mechanically, they each give a bonus or penalty to Harmony degeneration rolls, a free skill specialty, a discount to a Respect type, and determine what their default Rage type is. However, the bear guy they use as the example for the Den-Warders totally looks like Sean Connery.






Seriously, look at that. Fucking Sean Connery.

On to Favors. Let's just point out that, with maximum Stamina, the very first Favor is broken right in half when it's needed. Aquatic - which you can get for free if your animal lives in the water, because Nahuals give you tons of free Favors as part of the package - you can survive up to about mile below the surface without having to worry about getting crushed by pressure or freezing to death. You don't even need to shift forms to do this. If my Wolfram-Alpha-ing is correct, that's in the neighborhood of being crushed by 152 atmospheres, or 2234 PSI when you're 5000 feet below. And yet, you still need to buy Water Breathing to be able to hold your breath that long. Oh yes, I said hold your breath. You can either breathe water or hold your breath if you have Water Breathing, and you don't have to be underwater to use it. Something nasty in the air? Fuck that, I don't have to breathe for a couple hours now. This is just extrapolating one of a whole lot of broken abilities in here.

Other highlights include incredibly cheap perfect night vision that enhances your stealth, the possibility of having eleven limbs to use in combat, +4 to attack rolls in all forms via retractable claws or horns (?!), permanent 4/3 bulletproof armor for all forms available at character creation, the possibility of a Size 17 form when humans are Size 5, and free flight.

Now for Aspects. Let's get the most notorious one out of the way.

quote:

Aww!!! (• to •••••)
Some critters are too cute for words, even if they can rip your arm off. A feral with this talent can cute her way out of most kinds of trouble, adding a +1 bonus per dot to all Social rolls that emphasize her adorable qualities. This trick can be used in any form, but grants only half of the usual bonus to attempts made in human shape.

Yes, it's in italics in the book. This just makes me want to make a wereshark with Aww!!! 5. Lookit dose adowable teef!

Bare Necessities is the awful pun rename of the Rite of Pants from nWerewolf (which is not really called the Rite of Pants, it's just the only name anybody remembers.) You can absorb clothing and small objects into yourself when you shift, basically. So, yes, the default is that you're ass-naked every time you shapeshift back from animal form.



Beast Magic is freakishly, unbelievably broken. It allows you to take one specific spell from a Mage Arcana of your choosing (up to three dots), and be able to cast that without Paradox. To be fair, this costs a ton of experience - it has its own mini-track - and your maximum Feral Heart dots (the power statistic) can only be 3 - your maximum Beast Magic dots.

Wait, hold on a second, that means if you have a three dot Beast Magic spell, your maximum Feral Heart dots are zero, meaning you are no longer a Changing Breed by the rules of the game which means you can't have Beast Magic at all GOD FUCKING DAMNIT MY BRAIN JUST EXPLODED

Anyway, you can imagine that giving the already pretty evidently broken Changing Breeds access to Mage spells, expensive or not, quickly catapults things into "fuck you I win" territory. Nab the Life 3 spell that boosts Physical stats, shift into warform, and proceed to literally use trucks as throwing ammo.



Birth Blessing is a pointless one dot Aspect that allows the character to bless a pregnancy by kissing the mother's stomach or kneeling at their bed, which does...absolutely nothing except guarantees a healthy child and pregnancy. Welp. Would be great in real life, but really, how often would this come up in a role playing game?

I know what you are thinking and if you say it I blow your head off. I am going to start making these more short and skipping a lot just to show the worst off. There's still a lot.

A mere two dots allows you to purchase the ability to eat the hearts of your victims for Essence, essentially guaranteeing a morally bankrupt feral will never, ever run out of mojo.

Next is something that seems kind of innocuous until you read the whole thing:

quote:

Clever Monkey (• to •••••)
The agile mind of this shapechanger can assess a situation and fit together (literally or otherwise) the pieces involved. As an Aspect, this trait confers a +1 bonus per dot to Intelligence dice pools involved in solving puzzles, navigating
mazes and problem-solving dilemmas. The problem involved must have obvious "pieces" and a clear and achievable goal — this trick can’t puzzle out peace in the Middle East. This Aspect helps a feral repair an engine, master sudoku or solve a logical mystery. The Aspect works in all forms, and (contrary to its name) applies to all shapechanging animals.

I just...what.

For three dots, you can spend Essence to completely erase Aggravated damage, one-to-one. This is kind of incredibly useful due to Aggravated damage taking two weeks to heal normally, taking priority before other wounds. Also, due to a shoehorned fluff reason (the goddess Durga) weretigers get it for only two dots.



Exoskeleton shows off the completely hilariously imbalanced internal mechanics of the book by costing two merit dots to spend Essence to activate incredibly obvious armor that only acts as 1/1 armor that slows you down and makes you easier to hit. Meanwhile, three merit dots in Favors gets you 2/1 bulletproof armor with only a minor social drawback to make it available in human form.

You can spend merit dots to increase the perception roll to up to +5 (for smells), and perception is one of the most incredibly useful rolls in the entire system.

quote:

Magnificence (••)
A staggering example of his breed, this feral seems more like a totem spirit than an actual beast. His fur or scales shine, his eyes glow; an aura of sublime presence surrounds him at all times. Even in still air, the breeze seems to caress this marvelous creature. People and animals instinctively revere the character when he’s in his beast-forms. In game terms, the player adds a +4 bonus to Social rolls in which the werebeast stands to make a powerful impression — but only when he’s in one of the animal shapes.

Still sounds like you want to fuck animals, book.

Five dots gives you an potentially even more broken version of the Geist respawn mechanic called Nine Lives.




Sexual dimorphism is a mechanic.

Five dots gets you called attacks to the neck that deal aggravated damage.

You can literally buy the Totem mechanic from Werewolf for double cost. Way to completely steal a huge part of the game's world and not actually give it any backdrop, fuckers.

You can buy werewolf regeneration.

You can basically buy up to +5 in any fucking roll you can imagine.

The Sun-Chasers have their own special Aspects, including...um. Tar Baby. It does what it does in the Brer Rabbit story.

There is literally a "bully victim" merit that lets you hide easier in crowds but people ignore you and belittle you and blah blah fucking blah.

Y'know what, the stupid is eating my brain too hard to keep going right now. Suffice to say, Changing Breeds have a serious problem with "Anything you can do, I can do better," are jaw-droppingly broken, and flagrantly designed to make badass Mary Sues. And we haven't even gotten to the stats some of the shifter forms get. Here's a hint: elephant-shifters get a base bonus of twenty health levels by turning into their animal form.

Next time: completely retarded derangements, the old disguised as the new, and seriously fucking elephant men can get like Strength 12 without even trying what the fuck is wrong with this book